The Inebriator: An Arduino-powered robot bartender

Imagine having your own personal bartender ever-present in your home just waiting to be given the instruction to produce a cocktail of your choosing. While employing a dedicated bartender to be on hand 24/7 is the exclusive domain of the rich, a robot bartender doesn't have to be. Especially for those with a little passion and dedication – oh, and the technical know-how to build one out from the humble beginnings of an Arduino board. This is exactly what a group of amateur engineers have done with the Inebriator.

The Inebriator is designed very simply, with bottles lined up upside-down and optics providing set measures. The user places their glass on a pedestal and selects their drink of choice on the display at the front of the unit. The pedestal then moves along collecting the right spirits as it goes thanks to motors pushing the glass upwards at the appropriate moments. Finally it adds the mixers, connected as and when needed by nitrogen-pressurized tubes to deliver the final touches to the cocktails from a cooler located out of sight.

The Inebriator circuitry hidden out of sight

This project was existing in a vacuum with barely any coverage until a thread discussing it was started on Reddit. Since then people have weighed in with their thoughts on what would and wouldn't be possible, and what should and shouldn't be added, to make the Inebriator an even better prospect than it is already. An obvious suggestion that kept cropping up is an ice hopper and stirring mechanism, which will be explored as the guys behind the device develop a better version of their robot bartender.

This isn't the first robot bartender we've seen here on Gizmag, but while Barkeeper was an attempt to actually create a robotic version of a bartender complete with conversational skills and a catalog of corny jokes, the Inebriator removes all traces of human interaction and instead acts as a dumb waiter for drinks, forging cocktails to order.

The Inebriator is, at present, just a homemade project, but don't be surprised if this, or something very similar to this, is mixing drinks at your local bar at some point in the future.

The video below shows The Inebriator in action, mixing a cocktail with zero effort.